Willie Alexander singing with the Lost, a rock band formed by students at Goddard College in late 1964. / SUSAN GREEN/for the FREE PRESS

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My desire did not involve the practice of black magic, just a chance to portray the stereotypical wicked crone on stage.

Before I began attending Plainfield’s Goddard College, which encouraged experimentation and exploration, my sorceress dream had already come true once: I matched wits with Hansel and Gretel in children’s theater matinees for a Long Island summer stock company.

At Goddard in the 1960s, I auditioned for one of Shakespeare’s prophetic Weird Sisters in what’s traditionally referred to among superstitious theatrical types as “the Scottish play.” Anyone who mentions the actual title supposedly will be cursed.

But, although I could shriek “double-double, toil and trouble” with the requisite cackle, the director cast me as Lady Macbeth instead.

Toil and trouble followed. My triumph was greeted with collective disapproval by the theater clique, which deemed me an outsider who had unfairly snatched the plum role from one of their own, more deserving thespians.

Then, the sabotage began. Lee, the costume designer, was busy creating Elizabethan garb for others but had yet to take my measurements. My completed dress was baggy and an unflattering yellowish green. A royal purple outfit for Lady Macduff fit her perfectly, even though she was only in front of the audience long enough to be murdered.

"I'll tuck it in when I get a chance," Lee said, ignoring my plea for the sort of chic frock a noblewoman would wear around Dunsinane Castle in the Middle Ages.

I was forced to strut and fret my hour upon the stage looking like a zucchini. Moreover, my long nightgown in the sleepwalking scene posed a hazard because of the (illogical) candle I had to hold. On opening night, the Goddard Fire Department stood ready in the wings with a power hose that, if switched on, probably would have lifted me up to the rafters of the Haybarn Theater.

As head of the publicity committee, I found that designing the playbill was a less frustrating endeavor. I’d studied visual arts, although any course that required reading novels or writing fiction seemed preferable.

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My milieu was a bit bohemian, an outlook that suggested make-believe witchcraft might be cool. Some Goddard people enjoyed the wholesome world of folk dancing.

'The inmates had taken over the asylum'

But a certain newly-minted folksinger named Bob Dylan did not impress the school’s highfalutin entertainment committee, which turned down an opportunity to book him in early March of 1962 for a mere $75, including bus fare from Manhattan. I’d given them his forthcoming debut album but, after listening, they said: “We don’t think he has any talent.”

For me, the Bard continued to beckon. On a subsequent production of “Romeo and Juliet,” however, I opted to do makeup rather than risk the costumer’s wrath by appearing as a Montague or Capulet.

As a wild hippie ethos began permeating the campus after my graduation, a few truly dedicated dramaturges arrived: David Mamet (class of 1969), now a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, and his pal William H. Macy (class of 1971), currently the star of a Showtime series titled “Shameless.”

“I reveled in the atmosphere. The inmates had taken over the asylum,” Macy said of his Goddard experience when I interviewed him in 2011. “I quickly discovered that having few rules and no set curriculum and dizzying freedom was a heavy load to carry ... To survive there, you had to come up with a plan and some goals. I ended up learning a great deal about a single subject.”

That single subject was theater, his major. He stuck with it. I had become distracted, primarily by a fledgling five-piece band called The Lost, when rock ‘n’ roll began to eclipse the college’s jazz demimonde.

The quintet’s first gig, in the fall of 1964, took place at nearby Twinfield High School. The teenage crowd loved the shaggy-looking ensemble pounding out old tunes like “I Been Searchin’” by the Coasters.

My boyfriend, Willie, was one of the vocalists. Unable to afford a tambourine, the rudimentary percussion instrument he invented — a pint bottle devoid of whiskey but filled with a few spent bullets and a length of chain — was slapped against his thigh to keep the beat.

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Mid-performance, the bottle suddenly broke, scattering its contents and sending slivers of glass into Willie’s leg. Like a real trouper, he winced but kept on singing.

The Lost guys dropped out at the end of the semester, headed for Boston, gained considerable popularity and signed with Capitol Records. The label promoted them as “America’s answer to the Beatles,” though the scruffier Rolling Stones would have been a better comparison.

Two decades later the college may have been a financial proposition for three of the four young men in Phish. Keyboard player Page McConnell was paid $100 by the enrollment-challenged school in 1986 for persuading bandmates (lead singer-guitarist Trey Anastasio and drummer Jon Fishman) to transfer from the University of Vermont.

At a big outdoor concert this summer, Anastasio reportedly proclaimed “Goddard College!” as Phish launched into “Alumni Blues,” composed back when the jam band musicians were unknowns in Plainfield.

The arts are now vibrant throughout the Green Mountain State, quite different from my early years here. I remember only farms and sleepy little towns. We’d periodically catch a mainstream movie in Barre. A trip to Burlington’s sedate downtown, before the completion of Interstate 89, didn’t prove much more exciting.

Academia was the hub of culture. Bennington boasted a rich history of modern dance, for example, as well as literary legends such as novelist Bernard Malamud on the faculty. Goddard drew visiting luminaries: Beat poet Charles Olson and noted documentary filmmaker John Korty, in whose workshop I shot an 8mm short best forgotten.

Thankfully, nobody captured my zucchini-like Lady Macbeth on camera! As a witch, I’d surely have worn only black. I eventually left acting behind in favor of journalism but, to this day, can belt out a mean cackle.